Sami Miniaoui
University of Dubai, College of Information Technology, Faculty Member
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Le partage et la reutilisation d'objets d'apprentissage est encore une utopie. La mise en commun de documents pedagogiques et leur adaptation a differents contextes ont fait l'objet de tres nombreux travaux. L'un des... more
Le partage et la reutilisation d'objets d'apprentissage est encore une utopie. La mise en commun de documents pedagogiques et leur adaptation a differents contextes ont fait l'objet de tres nombreux travaux. L'un des aspects qui fait probleme concerne leur description qui se doit d'etre aussi precise que possible afin d'en faciliter la gestion et plus specifiquement un acces cible. Cette description s'effectue generalement par l'instanciation d'un ensemble de descripteurs standardises ou metadonnees (LOM, ARIADNE, DC, etc). Force est de constater que malgre l'existence de ces standards, dont certains sont relativement peu contraignants, peu de pedagogues ou d'auteurs se pretent a cet exercice qui reste lourd et peu gratifiant. Nous sommes parti de l'idee que si l'indexation pouvait etre realisee automatiquement avec un bon degre d'exactitude, une partie de la solution serait trouvee. Pour ce, nous nous sommes tout d'abord p...
Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
Indoor localization (IL) is a significant topic of study with several practical applications. The area of IL has evolved greatly in recent years due to the introduction of numerous technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, cameras, and other... more
Indoor localization (IL) is a significant topic of study with several practical applications. The area of IL has evolved greatly in recent years due to the introduction of numerous technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, cameras, and other sensors. Despite the growing interest in this field, there are numerous challenges and drawbacks that must be addressed to develop more accurate and sustainable systems for IL and its real-life applications. This review study gives an in-depth look into IL, covering the most promising artificial intelligence-based and hybrid strategies that have shown excellent potential in overcoming some of the limitations of classic methods. In addition, the paper investigates the significance of high-quality datasets and evaluation metrics in the design and assessment of IL algorithms. Furthermore, this overview study emphasizes the crucial role that machine learning techniques, such as deep learning and transfer learning, play in the advancement of IL. A focus ...
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The explosive increase in educational data and information systems has led to new teaching practices, challenges, and learning processes. To effectively manage and analyze this information, it is crucial to adopt innovative methodologies... more
The explosive increase in educational data and information systems has led to new teaching practices, challenges, and learning processes. To effectively manage and analyze this information, it is crucial to adopt innovative methodologies and techniques. Recommender systems (RSs) offer a solution for advising students and guiding their learning journeys by utilizing statistical methods such as machine learning (ML) and graph analysis to analyze program and student data. This paper introduces an RS for advisors and students that analyzes student records to develop personalized study plans over multiple semesters. The proposed system integrates ideas from graph theory, performance modeling, ML, explainable recommendations, and an intuitive user interface. The system implicitly implements many academic rules through network analysis. Accordingly, a systematic and comprehensive review of different students’ plans was possible using metrics developed in the mathematical graph theory. The ...
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Information and communication technologies (ICT), systems, and people are driving innovative approaches and actions to address issues such as urbanization, demographic change, and carbon footprints of cities. Current research on smart... more
Information and communication technologies (ICT), systems, and people are driving innovative approaches and actions to address issues such as urbanization, demographic change, and carbon footprints of cities. Current research on smart city technologies is typically focused on the areas of technology and applications. As a result, a holistic strategic framework is lacking, as partner organizations often fail to adopt and comply with the necessary interoperability standards, which can undermine the effective and rapid roll-out and transformation of smart city project strategies. This study aims to develop an ICT framework on the determinants of smart city adoption that is developed to help society and policymakers achieve the goals pursued under the smart city initiative, such as maximizing synergies between different ICT infrastructure activities and avoiding large-scale investments without increasing their potential or focusing on short-term solutions without considering long-term n...
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Leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into farming domains contribute significantly in more productive and sustainable farming activities. The concept of Smart stable depends on smart devices with the Internet connection to... more
Leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into farming domains contribute significantly in more productive and sustainable farming activities. The concept of Smart stable depends on smart devices with the Internet connection to monitor and control the stable system and its animals. This paper proposes this method to provide the farmer and the horse trainer with an automated process to perform their daily activities to take better decisions or more efficient exploitation operations and management. In addition to that, the proposed system with being powered with artificial intelligence (AI) component able to absorb new horse health status updates then combines it with knowledge learned from historical records to predict the horse readiness for participating in training or real race sessions. The system equipped with sensors to detect physical data from the real world such as the speed of the horse, temperature, heartbeats, recovery time. Gathered data flows feed an advanced visualization dashboard based on Kibana, while another branch of data flow feeds the AI component.
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Radio frequency Identification (RFID) technology is used in retails for the main goal of inventory management. We are proposing in this paper a novel case study of RFID technology for providing a new marketing and sale’s user experience.... more
Radio frequency Identification (RFID) technology is used in retails for the main goal of inventory management. We are proposing in this paper a novel case study of RFID technology for providing a new marketing and sale’s user experience. Coupled with Augmented reality, these technologies are the main pillars of our system Virtual Optics Fitting System (VOFS). The main purpose of VOFS is to provide a new marketing and sale tool that will assist retails in offering a new shopping experience for consumers of eyewear products. A detailed product description (material of the frame, brand, etc) will be displayed on the screen once the RFID reader will detect the tag fixed on a specific eyeglass. User also can stand in front of the camera in order to virtually try several frame shapes on his face which can facilitate his choice in finding a suitable eyeglass that fits his face. VOFS is used as a recommendation system providing trustworthy information of eyeglasses as well as a virtual fit...
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We try in this paper to propose a domain model for both author's and learner's needs concerning learning objects reuse. First of all, we present four key criteria for an efficient authoring tool: adaptive level of granularity,... more
We try in this paper to propose a domain model for both author's and learner's needs concerning learning objects reuse. First of all, we present four key criteria for an efficient authoring tool: adaptive level of granularity, flexibility, integration and interoperability. Secondly, we introduce and describe our six-level Semantic Learning Model (SLM) designed to facilitate multi-level reuse of learning materials and search by defining a multi-layer model for metadata. Finally, after mapping different learning content models with our SLM, we show how our Phoenix authoring tool can deal efficiently with share-and-reuse problem.
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Many cities are being named or motivated to become "smart" by the leaders, planners and officials. Smart cities infrastructure development involves "smart grids" for energy and water, "smart networks" for... more
Many cities are being named or motivated to become "smart" by the leaders, planners and officials. Smart cities infrastructure development involves "smart grids" for energy and water, "smart networks" for information and communications technologies (ICT) and "smart mobility" for transportation and logistics. The "smart" term is striving to be a solid brand in cities planning and management from all aspects. A very common theme in "smart" cities is the high dependency, and application of ICT technologies in city planning and management, which is expected to result-in superior and rational optimization of time and resources with harmonious smart city ecosystem. Nevertheless, the definitions of "smart" cities remain vague, and poor understanding may lead cities planners to possible technological traps such as heavy investments in ICT infrastructure for short-term solutions without reasonably considering the long term...
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Electric vehicles are approximately doubling each year, and the growth is projected to continue to have 20 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020. In order to reach this goal, research on charging next-generation electric cars... more
Electric vehicles are approximately doubling each year, and the growth is projected to continue to have 20 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020. In order to reach this goal, research on charging next-generation electric cars have shown a lot of interest. One major challenge with electric vehicles is range anxiety. The proposed research in this paper combines protocol design, analytical, probabilistic and experimental techniques to conduct comprehensive studies on multihop wireless energy transfer serving an integrated electrical vehicular adhoc network (e-VANETs) infrastructure. Our work is the first that addresses multihop energy transfer in e-VANETs and will have a significant impact on fundamental design principles for the development of future electrical car wireless charging infrastructures
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Research Interests:
In a data warehousing process, the data preparation phase is crucial. Mastering this phase allows substantial gains in terms of time and performance when performing a multidimensional analysis or using data mining algorithms. Furthermore,... more
In a data warehousing process, the data preparation phase is crucial. Mastering this phase allows substantial gains in terms of time and performance when performing a multidimensional analysis or using data mining algorithms. Furthermore, a data warehouse can require external data. The web is a prevalent data source in this context, but the data broadcasted on this medium are very heterogeneous. We propose in this paper a UML conceptual model for a complex object representing a superclass of any useful data source (databases, plain texts, HTML and XML documents, images, sounds, video clips...). The translation into a logical model is achieved with XML, which helps integrating all these diverse, heterogeneous data into a unied format, and whose schema denition provides rst-rate metadata in our data warehousing context. Moreover, we benet from XML's exibility, extensibility and from the richness of the semistructured data model, but we are still able to later map XML documents in...
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Reusing and adapting learning objects respectively in and to different contexts is one of the key issues of e-learning. In this article, we will describe Phoenix, our platform-free editor, designed to create, combine, recompose and enrich... more
Reusing and adapting learning objects respectively in and to different contexts is one of the key issues of e-learning. In this article, we will describe Phoenix, our platform-free editor, designed to create, combine, recompose and enrich texts thus allowing for the elaboration of well targeted and contextually coherent pedagogical objects. Not only does it provide a standard hypertextual navigation mode of the resulting documents but it also offers a pedagogical navigation in the form of a graphical view of the so called pedagogical tree (conceptual tree enriched with all concept-related arguments) thus highlighting semantical aspects. Furthermore, due to its integrated LOM compatible automated indexing functionality, PHOENIX greatly facilitates the storage, access and extraction of documents from ad hoc repositories such as the Ariadne Knowledge Pool. 1.
How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Scientific Information System Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Non-profit academic... more
How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Scientific Information System Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative
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Share and reuse of learning objects are an important issue, that are not solved by simply adding a metadata description. Their contextualisation as well as their level of granularity still pose some difficult and unsolved questions. We... more
Share and reuse of learning objects are an important issue, that are not solved by simply adding a metadata description. Their contextualisation as well as their level of granularity still pose some difficult and unsolved questions. We will present in this paper a Semantic Learning Model (SLM) facilitating the reusability of learning objects according to a pedagogical context. Our main contribution lies in the explanation of the decomposition process of pedagogical entities using an authoring tool called PHOENIX.
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Using RFID Technology is increasingly integrated in our daily life. We are presenting in this paper the secured parking spots for physically challenged ‘‘SPSPC’’ system implementing the RFID technology for managing parking slots of... more
Using RFID Technology is increasingly integrated in our daily life. We are presenting in this paper the secured parking spots for physically challenged ‘‘SPSPC’’ system implementing the RFID technology for managing parking slots of physically challenged. We demonstrated using scenarios (car with tag, car with expired date tag, car without tag) that the ‘SPSPC’ system is able to recognize not only cars equipped with tag -then send accordingly welcoming SMS -but also cars without tags by checking with a step tag fixed in the wall. Operational mode of the ‘SPSPC’ system is illustrated as well as main components, methods, snippets of code and interfaces are presented and commented. In addition, we demonstrated how the ‘SPSPC’ system is providing the tracking of people committing repetitively these violations -by reporting them to the authoritiesand generating statistics on parking occupancy rates helping in providing sufficient slots.
Research Interests: Engineering and TEM
There is a growing number of studies that highlighted the use of Twitter towards supporting better interaction between the wider audience in a variety of domains (e.g., business, education, and politics). Twitter has been found to be a... more
There is a growing number of studies that highlighted the use of Twitter towards supporting better interaction between the wider audience in a variety of domains (e.g., business, education, and politics). Twitter has been found to be a useful tool to facilitate online engagement between politicians and their followers/voters. The aim of this study is to examine the political engagement using twitter among Malaysia Parliamentary members. 26,293 tweets posted by 12 parliamentary members were extracted. Social network analysis technique was used to analyze the data. The findings show that the Malaysia parliamentary members used Twitter to engage with its followers and voters. However, the platform was not utilized to its full capacity. This paper ends by suggesting future directions for this research topic.
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This paper is proposing an innovative application (e-Pot) which uses QR Code technology along with a Web application for helping plant-fans manage, maintain and share practices using their mobile phones. Sharing experiences of growing a... more
This paper is proposing an innovative application (e-Pot) which uses QR Code technology along with a Web application for helping plant-fans manage, maintain and share practices using their mobile phones. Sharing experiences of growing a specific plant or identifying its requirements in terms of sunlight, temperature, recommended soil with other members can help in answering the crucial question which is: Why would you want to own this plant? The application is providing Facebook users with commenting option and notify them about any updates. Additionally, by leveraging mobile phones capabilities, this application provides users with a search by image feature by just picturing any plant on the go then searching among the recorded plants (Plantopedia) as well as Google image database. The e-Pot system is also allowing its members to maintain an account whereby they can register their own plants so the system can remind them through e-mail about convenient irrigation times according to...
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The number of car loan allocated by banks had increased for the better convenience of the customers. However, this has also led to an increase in the cases of loan defaulters who stopped paying for various reasons. Locating those cars is... more
The number of car loan allocated by banks had increased for the better convenience of the customers. However, this has also led to an increase in the cases of loan defaulters who stopped paying for various reasons. Locating those cars is the main issue faced by banks as this is not part of their daily activity. We are proposing a solution to address the issue of locating defaulters' cars at the earliest. Our system “Vehicular Tracking System” (VTS) will help banks overcoming this problem by introducing an automated intelligent system used to track the defaulters by using RFID technology. This system will be synchronized with the bank's database. Whenever the customer does not pay their dues and are not in contact with the bank, the bank will communicate the customer details to the recovery service using our system VTS. This company will mobilize its car fleet to patrol the city in order to locate those defaulters' cars. Once located, customers' details along with car...
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We try in this paper to propose a domain model for both author's and learner's needs concerning learning objects reuse. First of all, we present four key criteria for an efficient authoring tool: adaptive level of granularity,... more
We try in this paper to propose a domain model for both author's and learner's needs concerning learning objects reuse. First of all, we present four key criteria for an efficient authoring tool: adaptive level of granularity, flexibility, integration and interoperability. Secondly, we introduce and describe our six-level Semantic Learning Model (SLM) designed to facilitate multi-level reuse of learning materials and search by defining a multi-layer model for metadata. Finally, after mapping different learning content models with our SLM, we show how our Phoenix authoring tool can deal efficiently with share-and-reuse problem.
Research Interests:
The huge and exponentially growing diversity of digital material confuses the users who are confronted to the difficulty of choosing the right and appropriate document or information. On the same way the federation of Learning Object... more
The huge and exponentially growing diversity of digital material confuses the users who are confronted to the difficulty of choosing the right and appropriate document or information. On the same way the federation of Learning Object Repositories could conduct to the same difficulty while wanting to obtain a critical mass of learning object in order to facilitate their reusability. In this paper we describe a model, called SLM model and present a tool facilitating the decomposition process and the creation of multi source documents. According to the lifecycle of a pedagogical resource we develop a framework which performs three levels of adaptability: adaptive interaction, adaptive course delivery and content discovery and assembly.
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... (COP) FOR RESEARCHERS WITHIN UAE Mohanad Halaweh, College of Information Technology, University of Dubai, UAE mhalaweh@ud.ac.ae M. Basel Al Mourad, College of Information Technology, University of Dubai, UAE... more
... (COP) FOR RESEARCHERS WITHIN UAE Mohanad Halaweh, College of Information Technology, University of Dubai, UAE mhalaweh@ud.ac.ae M. Basel Al Mourad, College of Information Technology, University of Dubai, UAE second.author@university.ac.uk ...
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This study attempts to determine the concept and meaning of happiness for customers in the United Arab Emirates by understanding user preferences for governmental services. Focusing on three sectors, health, education, and utility, this... more
This study attempts to determine the concept and meaning of happiness for customers in the United Arab Emirates by understanding user preferences for governmental services. Focusing on three sectors, health, education, and utility, this study intends to highlight the main happiness indices and show how the level of priority or importance of these indices can differ between sectors. The results reveal that time is the most vital happiness factor for customers in the utility sector, followed by quality and cost. In contrast, in both the education and health sectors, quality is the most vital factor, followed by time and cost. Three models were generated for the selected sectors-based on keywords extracted from interviewee responses. Furthermore, customers in the United Arab Emirates prefer on-the-spot feedback tools to out-of-the-spot tools. The analysis results of the qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys can facilitate and guide the development and selection of appropriate...
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The main objective of this paper is to discuss the implementation of a Smart Happiness Meter (SHM) prototype that adopts a face detection and recognition approach to provide a real-time statistic on customer satisfaction. This prototype... more
The main objective of this paper is to discuss the implementation of a Smart Happiness Meter (SHM) prototype that adopts a face detection and recognition approach to provide a real-time statistic on customer satisfaction. This prototype does not only detect and recognize images but also determine customer emotion using sentiment analysis technique. The development of this prototype provides an alternative methodology to existing approach of measuring customer’s happiness which rely heavily on manual surveys using mobile applications. This paper discusses about the design and development methodology, its use-case diagrams and demonstrates the deliverables of the prototype in general.
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Crime Tracking System (CTS) aims to facilitate the process by automating data entry, storage, and retrieval using a mobile interface and a database to efficiently store said data. Crime investigation plays a significant role in keeping... more
Crime Tracking System (CTS) aims to facilitate the process by automating data entry, storage, and retrieval using a mobile interface and a database to efficiently store said data. Crime investigation plays a significant role in keeping the modern cities safe. The emergence of the field of data science has opened new doors that have high potential in facilitating the process of criminal investigation. Data science enables criminal investigators to create tangible and quantifiable information on criminal social network profiles then analyzes crime concurrence based on location proximity. Aiming at availing the relevance of integrating data science analysis techniques in the criminal investigation, this study examines the suitability of cluster graphs and geolocation proximity (through heat maps) as two of the data science analysis techniques to facilitate criminal investigation process. On one hand, cluster graph analyses the social network of a suspect and examines its centrality, parallel betweenness and community affiliation. On the other hand, geolocation proximity provides an investigator with previous crime occurrences through the use of the heat map visualizing technique. These concepts are tested by embedding them in a mobile application developed to facilitate investigation process. The findings of this study demonstrate that the integration of data science and investigation activities is feasible and can extend the investigation process beyond the scope of the police profile structured database based on manual interrogation activities. This study ends by concluding the limitations and future research directions.
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The objective of this paper is to examine the level of readiness among Dubai citizens to adopt Dubai Smart Government services using the new emerging technologies. This study adopts the Technology Readiness theory as the underlying factor... more
The objective of this paper is to examine the level of readiness among Dubai citizens to adopt Dubai Smart Government services using the new emerging technologies. This study adopts the Technology Readiness theory as the underlying factor predicting the citizen’s intention to adopt the e-government services. An online survey was conducted and 225 respondents replied to it. The data were analyzed using a structural equation modeling technique. The results show that a citizen’s intention to adopt e-government services using the new technologies are strongly influenced by their level of the service’s innovativeness and security. Meanwhile, the feeling of discomfort negatively influenced their intention to adopt e-government services. This paper ends by discussing the theoretical and practical contributions of this study.
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ABSTRACT A continuous monitoring system, based on wireless sensor networks, is proposed to help preserve paper rolls at printing facilities and paper mills. The system consists of four main components: environmental monitoring nodes, a... more
ABSTRACT A continuous monitoring system, based on wireless sensor networks, is proposed to help preserve paper rolls at printing facilities and paper mills. The system consists of four main components: environmental monitoring nodes, a base station, an application/database server and a remote monitoring station. By continuously monitoring temperature and moisture levels, the system is able to alert maintenance staff to take appropriate actions when the monitored environmental levels go beyond their operating range. The sensor nodes can also be configured to proactively take corrective actions to readjust the temperature and moisture levels. As a pilot study, a prototype system was successfully built for the remote monitoring of temperature and humidity at a local printing facility. This study demonstrates the successful application of wireless sensors to help safeguard paper stock and reduce unplanned production down-time at printing facilities and paper mills.
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We try in this paper to propose a domain model for both author's and learner's needs concerning learning objects reuse. First of all, we present four key criteria for an efficient authoring tool: adaptive level of granularity,... more
We try in this paper to propose a domain model for both author's and learner's needs concerning learning objects reuse. First of all, we present four key criteria for an efficient authoring tool: adaptive level of granularity, flexibility, integration and interoperability. Secondly, we introduce and ...
Research Interests:
Abstract Reuse and share of learning objects are an important issue. We noticed that the learning object enriched by its metadata is not sufficient for an easy reuse and most of the time their granularity is not enough thin. We try in... more
Abstract Reuse and share of learning objects are an important issue. We noticed that the learning object enriched by its metadata is not sufficient for an easy reuse and most of the time their granularity is not enough thin. We try in this paper to insist on the importance of the context as well as the granularity for a best reuse. We will present a semantic learning model (SLM) facilitating the reusability of learning objects according to a pedagogical context.
Abstract Reusing and adapting learning objects respectively in and to different contexts is one of the key issues of e-learning. In this article, we will describe Phoenix, our platform-free editor, designed to create, combine, recompose... more
Abstract Reusing and adapting learning objects respectively in and to different contexts is one of the key issues of e-learning. In this article, we will describe Phoenix, our platform-free editor, designed to create, combine, recompose and enrich texts thus allowing for the elaboration of well targeted and contextually coherent pedagogical objects.
Abstract: The huge and exponentially growing diversity of digital material confuses the users who are confronted to the difficulty of choosing the right and appropriate document or information. On the same way the federation of Learning... more
Abstract: The huge and exponentially growing diversity of digital material confuses the users who are confronted to the difficulty of choosing the right and appropriate document or information. On the same way the federation of Learning Object Repositories could conduct to the same difficulty while wanting to obtain a critical mass of learning object in order to facilitate their reusability.
Electric vehicles are approximately doubling each year, and the growth is projected to continue to have 20 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020. In order to reach this goal, research on charging next-generation electric cars... more
Electric vehicles are approximately doubling each year, and the growth is projected to continue to have 20 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020. In order to reach this goal, research on charging next-generation electric cars have shown a lot of interest. One major challenge with electric vehicles is range anxiety. The proposed research in this paper combines protocol design, analytical, probabilistic and experimental techniques to conduct comprehensive studies on multihop wireless energy transfer serving an integrated electrical vehicular adhoc network (e-VANETs) infrastructure. Our work is the first that addresses multihop energy transfer in e-VANETs and will have a significant impact on fundamental design principles for the development of future electrical car wireless charging infrastructures